How I Made it Through Swine Flu

It started on a Thursday, with incredible body aches. The next day was more of the same, but with pregnancy-level exhaustion. Saturday night saw me huddled under a blanket on the couch with a low-grade fever and a mean case of the chills; by Sunday morning I was retching.

My husband, Dave, bundled me up and took me to the clinic that afternoon. I donned a mask at the reception desk, crumpled in to a chair in the corner of the waiting room and avoid eye contact with the other patients. I knew what I looked like – death smeared on toast – and I couldn’t blame the nervous, unsettled glances I was getting. It wasn’t that long before I was called in – twenty minutes, maybe – but it felt like an eternity. I was so sick, so uncomfortable, that it was all I could do to not lie down on the floor of that waiting room and weep.

After checking my ears, nose, throat and chest, the doctor declared everything clear and announced that I was presenting as though I had H1N1. Confident that’s what I had, he prescribed Tamiflu. We left the clinic and the rest is a blur; one minute I was shouting at Dave to pull over, I’m going to barf! and the next I was in bed, having a very vivid dream that CNN was covering the breaking news of Bill Cosby’s death.

(Author’s note: Bill Cosby is alive and well; it was just the high fever screwing with my head.)

I was really sick, sicker that I’ve ever been in my life. I ran a fever for over a week and lost a significant chunk of weight. I was stomach sick for days and struggled to eat once the nausea passed. I developed a deep, incessant and exhausting cough. I felt battered and bruised, like I’d done gotten myself beaten up.

Despite the fact that I didn’t go to the hospital for a swab, I truly believe that I had the H1N1 virus. I fully expected that the rest of my family, the sitting ducks they were, would catch it from me – my only hope was that I’d be strong enough to take care of them once they got hit. But surprisingly, luckily, thankfully, (*reaches over to knock on wood*) nobody else got it. Dave and I tried to be as careful as we could; we did our best to implement habits that would cull the spread of germs within our household.

What did we do? Initially, when the kids and/or Dave were around me, we donned masks. For the first three or four days, the kids and I didn’t have much contact. They’d stand in my bedroom doorway, their small faces swallowed by the gigantic hospital masks, and wave at me; tell me they loved me. I didn’t kiss them, didn’t put them to bed; didn’t eat dinner with them. I wanted to, desperately, but I simply couldn’t.

While I was stomach sick, Dave and the kids primarily used the downstairs bathroom, leaving the upstairs one for me.  Having grown up in a house with only one bathroom, I was especially grateful to be able to spew my bodily fluids around without having to worry about disinfecting immediately afterward.

Instead of hand towels and face cloths, I used paper towels. I kept my toothbrush separate and got my own tube of toothpaste. We kept containers of antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer in both the bathrooms and the kitchen, and used them on the regular.

We wiped down all of the handles in the house (door handles, cabinet knobs, appliances handles, etc.), the remotes and the cordless phones regularly. Because of my persistent cough, I didn’t prepare the kids’ lunches for a good ten days. They go to school with small bottles of sanitizer, reusable water containers and strict instructions not to use the fountains at school. I also tell them to wash their hands – with soap – for as long as it takes them to sing Happy Birthday.

And we did laundry, lots and lots (and LOTS) of laundry, in hot water. If I coughed on it, we washed it.

Whatever it was that I had, be it H1N1 or a bout of the seasonal flu, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It was absolutely terrible, and the recovery process has been slow. I’m grateful that nobody else in my house has caught it yet, and I’d like to think that some of the measures my husband and I took here at home prevented the kids from getting sick at the same time I did. Still, I'm preparing myself for the day they come home with fevers and muscle aches...just in case.

::This is an original post for Canada Moms Blog. Mamatulip blogs her life at Where am I going...and why am I in this handbasket? and keeps it green over at The Green Mom Review::

(photo credit: Google Images)